Tag Archives: DIY

We are so excited to have the DuSable High School Wood Workshop join us for the 5th annual Chicago Northside Mini Maker Faire! They’ll be showing off the works of their students for the faire.

The DuSable High School Wood Workshop is part of the Bronzeville Scholastic Institute, an International Baccalaureate school. Part of the sophomore curriculum is the Design Curriculum where students learn to make cornhole boards, plyometric boxes, and more. The Workshop is excited to bring some examples of students’ work of cornhole boxes, plyometric boxes and a mural that a student created for her personal project!

The DuSable High School Wood Workshop can’t wait to come to Chicago Northside Mini Maker Faire. They look forward to showing the students’ creations and learning new ideas for projects for the classroom. The Workshop can’t wait to meet other makers and share new ideas. They hope to teach people how to use power tools, make measurements and build things. Moreover, the Workshop wants to show how important it is for resources to go into high schools so schools can support vocational and elective courses like Arts & Design.

We can’t wait to see them at the Chicago Northside Mini Maker Faire tomorrow!

Be prepared for Chicago weather: the forecast is a high in the 60’s, with scattered wind and rain. We have Makers exhibiting inside and outside, and we will continue rain or shine! So bring your rain jacket and hat just in case!

Want to create a mixed reality game with a steel framed cube? Join Bit Space at the Chicago Northside Mini Maker Faire!

Located in Lincoln Square, Bit Space’s mission is “to engage, enrich, and educate the creative and critical minds of our youth, using a full spectrum of material and computational skills for open-ended inquiry and design-build projects. From complete beginners through PhD caliber research, Bit Space can prepare young makers for any future they wish to pursue.” In conversation with co-founder Thomas Kearns, he explains, “Emerging technologies are transforming the way we make things, and the way we live, work, and play are increasingly a convergence of material and computational intelligence.” The space has several classes for ages starting at 6 years up to 18 years. They run many different classes from summer camps, workshops, and exciting birthday parties. BIt Space has many different projects available including making a skateboard “from a stack of raw veneer to a tricked out and completely custom, fully functional board they can ride out on.” Kearns explains, “Recent projects have included pewter casts using laser cut molds, laser trip wires without microcontrollers, interactive sound and light projects built with Arduinos, and virtual reality obstacle courses complete with physics based interactive elements.”

For Chicago Northside Mini Maker Faire, BIt Space will be bringing a prototype of a new project that they’ll run in their summer camp called “Inter-Act.” There, they will create “a 10′ steel framed cube which will serve as the armature/enclosure for a week long group project. Each week of the camp, the participants will re-conceive and implement a new identity or program for the cube using a range of technologies. With each new group will come a new set of interests and aspirations and hence a whole new concept for the cube. Right now Bit Space is “feverishly working on setting up some of the core building blocks for this, with body tracking using Kinect to augment the tracking within Oculus Rift and an improved communication framework for Arduino and Unity3d. We’re going to bring the Beta version of the cube to the Chicago Northside Mini Maker Faire, and work with participants to build out a mixed reality game experience that pits a group of people outside the cube with or against a brave soul wearing the Oculus inside.” That sounds really swell.

Want to travel to far away and impossible places without even moving? Come to the Digital Media Green Screen at the Chicago Northside Mini Maker Faire!

Caitlin Stich, leading teacher for the program, explains: “Digital Media at Schurz is a four year program that teaches students the tools and techniques needed to be a graphic designer in the professional world.” There are over 100 students in the program with even more students joining in the fall as freshmen.

For Chicago Northside Mini Maker Faire, participants of the faire will have the opportunity to learn and play with a green screen. According to Caitlin Stich, “The green screen, or really any solid color screen, allows us to easily change the background of an image. First we will have our guests choose a background from our selection which is full of cartoon landscapes, and other silly places. Then guests stand in front of the green screen and act out their scene such as if their background has the T-Rex from Jurassic Park chasing them, maybe they are pretending to be scared running away. Guests can either take the photograph using our DSLR cameras of each other or have our professional Digital Media artists take the photograph.” They’ll upload the photos to Google Drive so anyone can use them for Facebook or whatever! People should come and learn about this technology used so often as “special effects” in movies. Also, people should get ready to get silly and have fun with it! Digital Media is excited to meet new potential students who may be interested in joining the program in their Freshmen year.

Want to make a paper sculpture of the John Hancock building or the El? Join Build Your Own Chicago at the Chicago Northside Mini Maker Faire and construct architecture!

Matt Bergstrom started making Build Your Own Chicago cards in 1999. He started the project in order to teach himself Adobe Illustrator and has been making architecture cards ever since. Each card in Build Your Own is a 2D design of a building in Chicago and several other cities. You can cut it out and build it into a 3D building. Bergstrom explains: “By reconstituting the two-dimensional image into a scale model you can remember visiting the real place and imagine yourself inside it.” His first models are the Water Tower, Chicago Tribune Tower and Red Line El Train, but he has expanded into new designs including iconic buildings in other cities including NY, San Francisco, and Washington DC. We asked him which models he recommends to start with; he suggested starting with the El Train cards, the Rookery or the John Hancock. Bergstrom explained that one of his most difficult is Marina City but many paper crafters love the challenge!

At Chicago Northside Mini Maker Faire, he’ll be selling the cards and will have tools available for participants to build their own cities. There will be other large cutouts to practice with. He’ll be there to assist in the assembling of new buildings! Matt Bergstrom is thrilled at all the creativity he sees at Chicago Northside Mini Maker Faire; he can’t wait to check out the other makers at the Faire.

So make sure to stop by and build some of Chicago’s iconic buildings with Build Your Own Chicago!